One
day, as I was checking my monthly bank statement, I noticed that a charge
of $166.30 was made to my checking account on December 23, 2010 referencing
Sprint. I am not a Sprint customer. I called the telephone number printed
on the statement only to learn that the call could not be completed as
dialed. I called Sprint to ask for an explanation. Someone had paid their
bill over the telephone, giving my checking account number and routing
number for the account from which the payment would be made. Who was
this, I asked. The customer representative would not tell me, citing “privacy
concerns”. Sprint was protecting the privacy of its customers.

On
January 25, 2011, the same “customer” (or person calling
from the same phone) paid two other Sprint bills. One was for $212.17
and the
other for $451.61. Elsewhere in my statement, I spotted a charge of $308.39
referencing Qwest. I use Qwest for my land-line telephone but the charge
is around $40 per month. Again, my call to the referenced telephone number
could not be completed as dialed. Again, a customer representative told
me that the payment had been called in. Someone had the account number
and routing
number for my checking account.

It’s
not difficult to obtain such information. If I give a store clerk a check
in payment of merchandise,
the clerk can jot down the account number
and the routing number of my account. It’s printed on the check.
What is to prevent that person from paying all his friends’ cell-phone
bills? Did Sprint or Qwest have some other measure to make sure that
the caller
was authorized to charge my checking account? Evidently not. The customer
representative admitted as much. Qwest, like Sprint, would not tell me
who was charging my bank account because that would violate privacy rules.
I
was advised to contact the fraud unit of my bank to seek restitution
of the money stolen from me.

I did
call the fraud unit of U.S. Bank. A case was opened. My total loss
was $1,128.47.

The fraud
representative advised me to go immediately to a bank branch and close
my checking account, leaving enough money in the
current account
to
cover existing bills.

Would
U.S. Bank eventually learn the identity of the thieves so it could tell
me? No, this information would remain
confidential. The
only way
to find out who was charging my account was to file a police report.
The local
police might decide to investigate and prosecute the theft. They
could then subpoena Sprint and Qwest, forcing them to reveal who had
made
the fraudulent
charges. On a reverse yellow-pages directory, I learned that the
telephone numbers used by the thieves were associated with addresses
in North
Carolina and New Jersey.

I called
the Minnesota Attorney General’s
office to seek information about ”privacy laws” that
protected the thieves. The man who answered the phone did not know
the answer
to that question. However, the
Attorney General’s office had published a booklet giving steps
that victims of identity theft should take. Besides contacting the
local police,
I should contact the FBI, Better Business Bureau, the Federal Trade
Commission, and perhaps some other organizations. When I called,
an FBI representative
referred me to a web site where I might leave general information
about my situation.

I did
visit the bank’s branch office and
had a long conversation with the customer service representative.
I needed to decide if I wanted to close
the account. Certainly that would help to protect me against further
charges by the individuals who had accessed my accounts. However,
I had at least
twenty automatic payments to utility companies and other vendors
tied to my checking account.

Was there
a way that the bank could change all the authorizations
at one time?

The customer
representative checked and learned that this could not be done. I would
have to contact all the vendors separately,
both
to switch
the autopay
authorizations to my new checking account and to make sure that
there was enough money in the account if the change could not
be made in
time. I
knew that several bills on autopay were due to be paid in the
next few days. I
kept the old account open to accommodate those charges.

Why not
simply keep the existing checking account? The customer service representative
told me that the bank would reimburse
me for thefts
already made from my
checking account; but, if this happened in the future, I would
be on my own. The bank would not reimburse me for unauthorized
charges
to
my existing
account
if I kept it open. I decided it was prudent to close the checking
account and open a new one.

What
about the overdraft protection account associated with my checking account?
It was a great personal
convenience to
have
$10,000 of credit
to cover checks
and other charges made to my checking account if the account
was overdrawn. After closing the account, I learned that
the bank would
give me only
$500 of overdraft protection for the new account.

I was
quite unhappy about this. Why should I be punished for being a victim
of someone
else’s thievery. The customer service representative agreed
with me. She called the department in charge of overdraft
protection but this department refused to increase the loan limit back
to $10,000. I was
advised to come back tomorrow to see if there was a way
to open another line of credit tied to my checking account.

After
leaving the bank, I visited the 4th precinct headquarters
of the Minneapolis police department. A man at the front
counter took
information
from me about
the theft. He said that the police were swamped by cases
of white-collar crime. The loss had to exceed $10,000
before it
would become
a priority for investigation. (So much for the idea that
we would eventually
learn the thieves’ identity
when Sprint and Qwest were subpoenaed.) The officer shared
my disgust with a system that would allow people to pay
bills over the phone if they had
other people’s banking information. He proposed
moving to another country. But at least my case now had
a report
and a report number.

I spent
the rest of the afternoon calling organizations whose bills I paid through
autopay.
Each company’s system was different. One credit-card
company was able to change to a new account over the
phone. Another required me to fill out a new form sent
by mail and include a voided check. Another
had me make the changes on its website. The change
in account numbers could take anywhere between a day
to
a month to process.

I was
quite nervous about credit-card payments because if payments are late
or returned,
the interest rate
might be
drastically
increased. My
existing
rates were between 4 and 5%. If an autopay payment
did not go through, the interest rate might immediately
increase
to between
25% and
30%. Who knows
what might happen if mortgage payments did not process.

My
purpose in returning to the bank on the following day was to see if
the customer service representative
could
find a
way to
restore
the $10,000
line
of credit for overdraft protection. Evidently,
the department in charge of this credit would not budge
from its offer
of a $500
limit. The
picture brightened
after the representative checked with her superior.
He advised her to call the fraud unit. The fraud
representative said
she could help.
After
putting
us on hold for a long period of time, we did manage
to
get the credit limit for overdraft protection increased
back
to $10,000.

There
was only one catch. If the reserve line were increased, I had to close
the old checking account
immediately.
Evidently, the
bank
was worried
that
I would have too much credit in relation to my
income. I had to make a quick decision about
closing the
account. I
had intended
to cover
payments expected
in the next several days from the old account.
Now several of these
payments would bounce. My only recourse was to
call as many of them as I could
to
try to make alternative payment arrangements
or else beg forgiveness for my failure to perform.

It was
late Friday afternoon. Many of these companies did business on Monday
through Friday
between
the hours of
8 a.m. and 5
p.m. I knew that
a payment
was due on the following day, Saturday, for
a particular credit card. My only hope was to negotiate
for
alternative arrangements
on the
telephone. For forty minutes I was put on hold,
listening to a recording about
how important my call was to the company. Finally,
a female customer-service representative
answered. She told me that I could switch to
a new checking account for
autopay by visiting the company’s website.

While
I was on hold, I had been trying to navigate
the company’s website.
Evidently, I had used it years before to set
up the autopay feature. When I first opened
the site, I learned that the credit-card company
was in bankruptcy.
Perhaps that explained the limited budget that
it had for customer service at this hour.

I
tried to enter the section of the web site
pertaining to my account. Unfortunately, I had forgotten
the password.
I
was given instructions for
resetting the
password.
Each time I followed the recommended routine,
I received the following error message: “error
staging email for ChangePassword”.
The password had to be between six and twenty
characters,
with at least one word and one
number, etc., etc. I tried various passwords
but nothing worked. I kept getting the same
error message. Therefore, I could not enter
the section where my autopay could be switched
to a new checking account.

When
the customer representative was finally on the line, I
knew enough to reject her
advice about
making
the change
through
the
website. I
explained my inability to change my password.
The woman kept “sirring” me
as she explained that she could not help
with the website. I asked what might be
done. I could make a telephone payment,
however
there was a $12 service
charge for exercising that option. At this
point, $12 looked like a bargain if the
telephone payment would help me avoid defaulting
on
tomorrow’s
obligation.

Eventually,
however, I would need to change the checking account information
for autopay.
If
the website would
not allow this
and if the telephone
representatives were clueless about computers,
how might I accomplish this change? Email
messages were not being accepted. The
only way, apparently, was to write a letter
to the company
at its headquarters
in New York
state.
So that
I what I did. Hopefully, someone there
can give me a new password or even change
the checking-account information for
me.

Since
it is now Saturday, I will need to make additional calls on Monday morning
to deal
with the closed
checking account.
At least
one other
company had planned to charge me on
Saturday,
but this, fortunately, is not a financial
institution. The worst that can happen
will be to be charged $20 or so for
a failed
payment
attempt.

In summary,
the “convenience” that
Sprint and Qwest accords its customers
in allowing them freely to access other
people’s checking
accounts has cost me the better part
of three days and expected financial
penalties relating to my closed account.
Their thieving customers may have privacy
rights, but I’m going public.
Maybe someone will care.